11/22/63

There was only one star on the Lions’ football team, and that was Jim LaDue — didn’t he have his own billboard, at the intersection of Highway 77 and Route 109? But if there was any player who made it possible for Jim to star, it was Mike Coslaw, who planned to sign with Texas A&M as soon as his senior high school season was over. LaDue would be rolling with the ’Bama Crimson Tide (as both he and his father would be happy to tell you), but if someone had asked me to pick the one most likely to go pro, I would have put my money on Mike. I liked Jim, but to me he looked like a knee injury or shoulder separation waiting to happen. Mike, on the other hand, seemed built for the long haul.

“What does Bobbi Jill say?” Mike and Bobbi Jill Allnut were practically joined at the hip. Gorgeous girl? Check. Blonde? Check. Cheerleader? Why even ask?

He grinned. “Bobbi Jill’s behind me a thousand percent. Says to man up and stop letting those other guys get my goat.”

“Sounds like a sensible young lady.”

“Yeah, she’s the absolute best.”

“Anyway, I suspect a little name-calling isn’t what’s really on your mind.” And when he didn’t reply: “Mike? Talk to me.”

“I’m gonna get up there in front of all those people and make a fool of myself. Jimmy told me so.”

“Jimmy’s a helluva quarterback, and I know the two of you are pals, but when it comes to acting, he doesn’t know jack shit.” Mike blinked. In 1961 you usually didn’t hear the word shit from teachers, even if they had a mouthful. But of course I was only a substitute, and that freed me up some. “I think you know that. As they say in these parts, you may stagger, but you ain’t stupid.”

“People think I am,” he said in a low voice. “And I’m strictly a C student. Maybe you don’t know that, maybe subs don’t get to see the records, but I am.”

“I made it a point to see yours after the second week of rehearsals, when I saw what you could do onstage. You’re a C student because, as a football player, you’re supposed to be a C student. It’s part of the ethos.”

“The what?”

“Figure it out from the context and save the dumb act for your friends. Not to mention Coach Borman, who probably has to tie a string on his whistle so he can remember which end to blow.”

Mike snickered at that, red eyes and all.

“Listen to me. People automatically think anyone as big as you is stupid. Tell me different if you want to; according to what I hear, you’ve been walking around in that body since you were twelve, so you should know.”

He didn’t tell me different. What he said was, “Everybody on the team tried out for Lennie. It was a joke. A goof.” He added hastily. “Nothin against you, Mr. A. Everybody on the team likes you. Even Coach likes you.”

A bunch of players had crashed the tryouts, intimidating the more scholarly aspirants into silence and all claiming they wanted to read for the part of George Milton’s big dumb friend. Of course it had been a joke, but Mike’s reading of Lennie had been the farthest thing in the world from funny. What it had been was a goddam revelation. I would have used an electric cattle prod to keep him in the room, if that’s what it took, but of course there was no need of such extreme measures. Want to know the best thing about teaching? Seeing that moment when a kid discovers his or her gift. There’s no feeling on earth like it. Mike knew his teammates would make fun of him, but he took the part anyway.

And of course Coach Borman didn’t like it. The Coach Bormans of the world never do. In this case, however, there wasn’t much he could do about it, especially with Mimi Corcoran on my side. He certainly couldn’t claim he needed Mike for football practice in April and May. So he was reduced to calling his best lineman Clark Gable. There are guys who can’t rid themselves of the idea that acting is for girls and queers who sort of wish they were girls. Gavin Borman was that kind of guy. At Don Haggarty’s annual April Fool’s keg-party, he had whined to me about “putting ideas in that big galoot’s head.”

I told him he was certainly welcome to his opinion; like assholes, everybody had one. Then I walked away, leaving him with a paper cup in his hand and a perplexed look on his face. The Coach Bormans of the world are also used to getting their way through a kind of jocular intimidation, and he couldn’t understand why it wasn’t working on the lowly sub who’d stepped into Alfie Norton’s director’s shoes at the last minute. I could hardly tell Borman that shooting a guy to keep him from killing his wife and kids has a way of changing a man.

Basically, Coach never had a chance. I cast some of the other football players as townspeople, but I meant to have Mike as Lennie from the moment he opened his mouth and said, “I remember about the rabbits, George!”